At last night's sh*tshow, Ben Carson thought it would be cool to attach Hillary Clinton to Saul Alinsky and thus to Lucifer. Paraphrasing, Hillary Clinton takes as her mentor Saul Alinsky (not true) who dedicated a book to Lucifer. Therefore, Hillary Clinton worships Lucifer. Right?
Ben Carson reads the Bible, the last book of which, Revelation, is about Satan and hell. That means his devotional includes the devil, and that means Ben Carson worships Satan, right?
There is, of course, a lot to unpack there, not the least of which is the whiff of anti-Semitism any time there is an attack on someone named Saul Alinsky (or Sidney Blumenthal, for that matter). The idea that you would say a Jewish name, invoke the name of Lucifer, and wait for the crowd to hiss?
Do you think the Republican Party has evolved enough to be past anti-Semitism? Did you notice the RNC's official YouTube live stream being taken over by anti-Semitic remarks as a Jewish Republican woman addressed the convention this week? And don't get me started about the red "sheriff's star" of Twitter.
As a writer, I think it's way too easy to compare the Republican Convention to anything relating to Germany in the thirties.
But there are other authors who have been condemned for their writings related to the underworld, the most famous of which is Salman Rushdie. Rushdie was condemned to death and forced into hiding by the Ayatollah Khomeini because he wrote a book called "The Satanic Verses." This article in The Guardian goes into the history of the book and the fatwa and backlash that ensued. Rushdie's tweet today reprints Alinsky's "dedication" to Lucifer.
The Satanic Acknowledgment: This is Saul Alinsky on Lucifer. Can't expect Ben Carson to recognize irony or humor. pic.twitter.com/FYNY4gcgy7
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) July 20, 2016
Exactly. Like Salman Rushdie, I don't expect the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party (the only ones who showed up this year, notice) to understand poetry and literature and allusion and symbolism. They are brute force anti-intellectuals. But they are also haters in a long tradition that we should be so wary of, that we run to the polls to defeat them forever, amen.
The author has a Master's degree in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.
